Eating the corpse of a domestic dog has the same consequences as cannibalism unless you are an orc or a caveman. This will give you the aggravate monster intrinsic, but will not decrease your luck: "You feel that eating the little dog was a bad idea." While you should not sacrifice a former pet, offering a dog corpse is otherwise safe.

The little dog is one of the most famous NetHackmonsters - it has served as the starting pet for the player ever since Hack 1.0, although in recent times you also have the option of starting with a kitten for a starting pet (knights will get a pony instead). They are capable of growing up into dogs.

The little dog and his more experienced brethren are sometimes better fighters than newly started characters and can be used to fight for you in the early stages of the game. Nevertheless, they may be more vulnerable than newly started characters against passive attacks, such as acidic monsters or floating eyes. They also are extremely vulnerable to falling rock traps and rolling boulder traps and many have been lost within the first hundred turns of a game to this.

The dog is a grown-up little dog and is therefore usually encountered as a player's pet. They are capable of growing up into large dogs.

As with their brethren, they are excellent fighters to have as companions to early game characters, but remain vulnerable to passive attacks. They may have trouble with watch captains in minetown, although regular watchmen shouldn't pose too much trouble.

The large dog is a grown-up dog and is therefore usually encountered as a player's pet (especially with early game characters, as they are easy to obtain by training their little dog).

As with their brethren, they are excellent fighters to have as companions to early game characters, but remain vulnerable to passive attacks. Eventually, it may be worthwhile to attempt to upgrade your large dog to another monster using a polymorph trap, especially if you have more than one pet.

Pet dogs

Taming wild dogs is usually easy, because all sizes of dog are considered domestic animals. Throwing a meaty treat, a safe fresh meat-based corpse, or processed human food at a hostile or peaceful dog will tame it. Throwing any other comestible at a dog will at least render it peaceful, with the exception of cream pies and eggs (which will break on impact).

As an additional challenge, if it is night and the moon is full, dogs are harder to tame with food and there is only a 1 in 6 chance of success.

Dog Names

The classes which always have a dog as a starting pet each have a unique name for their starting little dog. If dogname is not set, the little dog will automatically be given one of these names, according to the player's class.

SLASH'EM

Encyclopedia entry

A domestic animal, the _tame dog_ (_Canis familiaris_), of
which numerous breeds exist. The male is called a dog,
while the female is called a bitch. Because of its known
loyalty to man and gentleness with children, it is the
world's most popular domestic animal. It can easily be
trained to perform various tasks.